ya just did reply............... and i dont stalk, you shouldnt blurt out things that are not true, oh wait, you do that daily, because you dont know what the truth is, i just come to see the amusing thoughts of a non informative person, and ya never let anyone down my grammer is fine, i have 2 college degrees and 2 classes short on my third, i am a very smart person, thanks for the reply, buddy.

Oh good grief. Instead of having a #### contest back and forth about who started what, why don't you both just call it even, agree to look forward, leave each other alone, and shut up about it? MJ, you know I like ya, and I've got nothing against Peanuts either, but this crap is getting so old.

"This one's for every one of those fans in the stands that pull for me every week and take all the bull**** from everybody else." - Tony Stewart, July 29, 2007

Smoke14TS wrote:Oh good grief. Instead of having a #### contest back and forth about who started what, why don't you both just call it even, agree to look forward, leave each other alone, and shut up about it? MJ, you know I like ya, and I've got nothing against Peanuts either, but this crap is getting so old.

I agree and I won't be responding to anymore and will concentrate on posting Racing stuff. ( in here) Have a Great Day

Those who intentionally live off another’s labor will always want more free stuff!

Jimmie Johnson's crew finishes up one of hundreds of pitstops a year while cars travbel down pit lane under the watchful eye of NASCAR timing and scoring. This is a topic that comes up every year with no real resolution, the general public doesn't see the process in action and so on.

But when five-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson goes off after a recent race that he was not speeding and NASCAR was wrong for penalizing his team, it raised some additional eyebrows.

Several days after his rare bashing of NASCAR, Johnson retracted his comment and apologized for the indiscretion, but you could tell there is still an “air” about the process in his comments.

The process of catching drivers speeding down pit lane has evolved over the past few decades, where they used to simply and arbitrarily pick a driver to time and possibly punish by using a handheld stop watch.

We have surely progressed from those days, with sophisticated timing loops buried below the surface of pit lane in a number of speed zones, some of them being different lengths than others.

It’s no big secret to the teams as to where they are and they spend a lot of time trying to figure out ways to ‘beat’ the system by speeding just a little bit in between segments or just at the end or beginning of one.

Yes, there is a 4.99 mph leeway, but go over that and you’ll get busted...maybe. In an unusual move, NASCAR recently allowed TV cameras into timing and scoring and more specifically, the inner workings of the pit lane speeding setup. There are several computer monitors indicating a car's speed as it travels down pit lane. If a car went over the magic number, the box it was in would show up bright red and the attending official would indicate to “higher-ups” the infraction, whereupon the team would be informed…maybe.

Is the current pit lane speed equipment adequate to catch those speeding on a consistent basis? Yes, just fine. No, it just doesn't seem right. There must be a better way to police the sitaution. Submit Vote vote to see results Is the current pit lane speed equipment adequate to catch those speeding on a consistent basis?Yes, just fine.35.2%No, it just doesn't seem right.14.8%There must be a better way to police the sitaution.50.0%Total votes: 54 I keep saying maybe, because in my heart of hearts, I don’t believe that all infractions are reported. I and many others feel that NASCAR needs to have grey areas to play with to give them the ultimate control of what goes on.

This is just one of many grey areas NASCAR holds close to the vest. Race fans and media members have asked if the pit lane speeding results should be open to the public during the race broadcast, so that we’re all on the same page? If they did, the grey area would be gone and that will never happen with NASCAR.

How does NASCAR help the teams with this process? Well, some of you may not realize that before a race starts, the cars travel down pit lane behind the pace car at the pre-determined pit lane speed for that particular track and the drivers are supposed to note what RPM they are traveling at and in what gear. This is not done at all tracks all of the time.

Some drivers have asked, "What about speedometers?" Besides not being terribly accurate, it’s just another electronic gauge that NASCAR does not want in the car, as it may have the ability to hide a traction control device, the number one no-no on the things not to do list in NASCAR.

There are a couple of hundred speeding violations a season in each division. They are costly in the big picture and are sometimes unavoidable, with drivers and teams always trying to stretch the envelope at every turn.

No matter what NASCAR comes up with and there are bound to be changes down the road, drivers will stretch their legs and get caught. It’s tough to tell drivers to slow down when the object of the sport is go fast and get to the end first.

Those who intentionally live off another’s labor will always want more free stuff!

KANNAPOLIS, N.C., – With the exception of Helio Castroneves, the IZOD IndyCar Series driver who won season five’s Dancing With The Stars competition, there’s not a racecar driver around who would consider themselves a good dancer, at least on the dance floor. But on the racetrack, that’s a much different story, especially for drivers in the elite NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, and especially at the two restrictor-plate tracks they visit – Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway and Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.

The two venues represent a very different style of racing – one that even Carrie Ann Inaba, Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli could appreciate, as both ballroom dancing and dancing in a restrictor-plate draft require proper footwork, excellent communication and, above all, trust.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the season-opening Daytona 500, where drivers had to align themselves in two-car drafts to make any headway toward the front of the field. It created a dicey game of bumper cars that sometimes led to drivers involuntarily spinning out their dancing… err, drafting partner. And in those two-car drafts, the drivers had to work together, for the second car couldn’t run behind the lead car for more than eight laps, otherwise its engine would overheat. That meant the two drivers had to coordinate a 200 mph swap, with the lead car drifting high or low to allow his partner to scoot past, whereupon the former leader of the two-car draft assumed the role of pusher.

This dance took place among 43 cars for 500 miles, and it will take place again in Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 at Talladega.

Fresh pavement and an updated aerodynamic package for 2011 created this brave new world of restrictor-plate racing, jettisoning the old, freight-train style of racing where all 43 cars would run in a single pack, destined to be derailed. There are still derailments in this new modern dance, but the participants have more options and more maneuverability than they ever had before.

For Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 14 Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevrolet Impala for Stewart-Haas Racing, that’s a good thing. With more of the race in his hands, he was a contender throughout the Daytona 500, running as high as second with two laps remaining. But while the dance moves were new, he still needed a partner to pull them off, and in those waning laps, Stewart found himself without the help he needed to take the lead. Instead, he fell back to 13th and watched as someone else danced in Daytona’s victory lane.

Talladega presents Stewart with another opportunity to tango, and thanks to the knowledge gained from Daytona, expect the two-time Sprint Cup champion to perform like Fred Astaire on Talladega’s 2.66-mile dance floor.

Is the racing at Talladega going to be just like what we saw back in February at Daytona?

“I think it will be identical to Daytona, actually. It’s a wider track, so instead of just three-wide, you might be able to get guys four-wide there pretty comfortably.”

What did you learn from Daytona?

“Well, you had to have a partner. There was no choice. There wasn’t anybody that ran by themselves that didn’t go a lap down. There wasn’t any, ‘Well, I might or might not get a partner.’ You had to have a partner. There was no doubt. And you both had to know where each other was going all the time, and that was the hard part. Somebody had to lead. Somebody had to follow. The guy that was following had to trust the guy that was leading. The guy that was leading had to trust that the guy he was leading was going to do everything that he was supposed to do behind him.”

How hard was it to have that trust?

“I think we all figured it out in a couple of days, long before we got to the 500, during practice sessions, what we were going to have to do. So, we all learned to trust each other. By the time we got to the race, everybody knew the situation and knew that if you got paired up with somebody – it didn’t matter who it was – that this is what was going on. The hard thing was just the communication of it, getting with each other’s spotters or getting on each other’s radios and being able to communicate what each other needed to do.”

How important was communication during the race?

“You had to work really hard at trying to get the spotters to communicate with each other. It’s really hard for the spotters because while they’re trying to take care of us while we’re in the racecars, they’re sitting up there trying to find another driver’s spotter that’s 20 feet away. And they’re still trying to watch the racetrack, go down and find that guy’s spotter, and try to communicate information. Instead of it just being a direct link, sometimes it was up to a spotter, over to another spotter, down to a driver, that driver responds back, and it comes back down the chain again. But, everybody’s learned to do it. You got used to it.”

How did you like running in pairs?

“I liked it better than running with a 30-car pack. At least the two guys could do something. Two guys could race. You weren’t good enough by yourself, but you still could race that way. You still could race. You still could draft guys, pass guys. You actually had a chance to race. It was just different than what we’ve ever seen before. Different than anything that’s ever been done in the sport.”

In no other sport do you see competitors communicating the way you guys did while you’re all trying to win the Daytona 500. What did you think of that?

“Yeah, but our sport’s always been different. We’re the only sport that has 43 guys competing against each other every week for one win. It’s not just one team versus another. It definitely was different. It was something that this sport has never, ever seen before. As technology advances, as racecars get better, as racetracks get better, it makes the driver have to find that next thing to go faster.”

Was the Daytona 500 more physically draining or more mentally draining?

“It was more mentally draining than anything. It wasn’t physically demanding at all, but mentally, that was everything. That was 100 percent of the equation.”

What does it feel like to run in these two-car packs at the restrictor-plate tracks?

“Until Daytona, this was something we’d never really done before. Until the CoT (Car of Tomorrow), you never had this opportunity. If you tried to do what we’re doing now, you’d pick the guy’s rear wheels off the ground and crash half the field. We never had a surface smooth enough to allow us to do what we’re doing.

“What we’re doing now was shaping up back when Talladega was first paved, and it’s been building and building since. It’s evolved. We went from 30?car packs to two?car packs. It’s just the evolution of the sport and how things are changing.

“I don’t know what it’s like to look at and watch, but I know what it feels like. When you’re in that third group and you catch a group that’s running side?by?side, they can’t get away from each other, but you’re running five to eight mph faster. The guy behind you can’t tell if you want to slow down, so you have to find a hole when you get there. If you don’t find one, you almost have to make one, to a certain degree.

“But I can promise you this, the guys that are driving these things are watching. Everybody is watching out for each other. Everybody knows that we can put each other in a bad spot in a hurry if we don’t give each other room. You don’t see guys blocking like we’ve seen in the past.

“I’ll be honest, I didn’t like the big packs we used to have to run in. I didn’t like that people always had to block. I never agreed with that. The good thing is, now we don’t have to do either. If you get a run on a guy, you’re going to make an opportunity to pass them. You may not get it done, but at least you have that opportunity now.”

[i]It really doesn't matter who posts or what they post as long as it's within guidelines of the web master. If the charter members look to who posts we know some of our former Garage guys are no longer active. I miss alot of them. I have no idea why they dropped out after the change. I know for me I really like some of the new things but dislike others. So I figure "thats the way the cookie crumbles". I'm just glad Tony supplies the funds for this website. Thanks Tony. /i]

The Military Thanks You For Standing Behind Them. If You Can't Do that You Can Always Stand In Front Of Them.....Think About It.....

Thank you to those who took a step forward to save the rest who stand still.

HOW WAS FIRST PRACTICE? “They gave me full throttle, they gave me full throttle today, I’m excited about it. It is pretty cool. I’m surprised they trust me enough to give me full throttle. (LAUGHS) It is everything it was at Daytona so far. There is absolutely nothing that was different so far.”

YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE TWO-CAR DRAFT? “The same as they were at Daytona. My feelings are the same as they were the whole 10 days we were at Daytona, it hasn’t changed. I wish I could tell you something different, but it is the same, it is not any different.”

ARE YOU OPEN TO HAVE MORE GUYS ON YOUR RADIO AND HAVING THEM AVAILABLE OR HAS YOUR MINDSET CHANGED? “I think I am open to having more channels. I think it was a better feeling if you were the guy behind of knowing that you could hear what was going on with them. The sharing of the spotters wasn’t a bad thing. I’m open to having more frequencies and more driver’s channels.”

DOES IT FEEL ODD OR DIFFERENT TO TALK TO ANOTHER COMPETITOR, PAUL MENARD SAID HE FLIPPED OVER TO YOUR CHANNEL AND WAS A LITTLE TIMID TO SOMEONE NOT A TEAMMATE? “I didn’t even know he was coming so it was different at first until you realize after you had the first surprise of the first guy coming, then anybody else that come on really wasn’t a surprise anymore. At least it didn’t seem a surprise. It was like ‘Wow, I’m glad he’s got it’. I think you are going to see a lot of that. I think you are going to see guys flipping all over the place. We will be as busy wearing the radio dial out trying to find different drier’s channels than we are driving the car.”

CLINT SAID IF THERE IS A CAUTION LAST 10 LAPS IT IS GOING TO BE HILARIOUS ON THE RADIOS: “Oh my gosh, yeah. It’ll be really busy, I’ll guarantee it. I think it will be busy even if there is not a caution. There are guys going to be flipping around at the last minute.”

HOW WOULD YOU ASSESS THE FIRST SEVEN RACES FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM? “We’ve been running well, we just haven’t put a whole day together. That is the disappointing part of it. But the good part is that we’ve had really good cars. I feel like our mile-and-a-half and two-mile program is really good. I feel like we are struggling on the short track stuff. Feel like both cars in the organization are doing a really good job right now.”

HOW LONG DOES THE FRUSTRATION AND DISAPPOINTMENT LAST? “Until you have something good happen. Until you get it done. Until you get it right.”

HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH GOOD YET? “No. Have we won a race yet? Then we haven’t got it.”

YOU ARE DOING A CHARITY EVENT WITH NEW HAMPSHIRE, CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THAT? “Yes, I’m pretty excited. It is a deal that Dick Berggren put together. Myself, Dick and one of the local radio personalities are going to have a pretty neat dinner Loudon weekend on Thursday night. The proceeds go to Speedway Children’s Charities. Dr. Dick was the master-mind behind. It will be fun. You know that Dick is going to have some really good stories to tell everybody and he’s forgot more about racing than all of us in this group know. It will be cool. It is fun having guys that have been around as long as Dick has that can go there and tell people the way it is now, the way it was five years ago and the way it was way back then.

“Dick came to me and said to me ‘Hey, would you go do a dinner with me to help Speedway Children’s Charities’ and I said yes. It was that easy. It wasn’t ‘Ah we need to think about how we need to give back more’. You have a guy like Dick that says ‘Hey could you come do a dinner and this is what I am wanting to do’ and it was ‘Yeah, if we have it open, I’m in’. “

IS THIS TYPE OF RACING MORE MENTALLY DRAINING THAT SOME OTHERS? “It is still more mentally draining to deal with you guys (the media) than it is to drive the cars here.”

WHAT DID YOU TELL THE JOURNALISM STUDENTS AT ALABAMA THIS WEEK? “I gave them the list of the hit-list media and I’m sure they will be interviewing you guys soon. (SMILES). Not that you guys didn’t know that already.”

IN THE TWO-CAR TRAIN, HOW MUCH ARE YOU AT THE MERCY OF SOMEONE SIDE-DRAFTING YOU AND DISCONNECTING YOU? “We learned at Daytona that you could do that a lot easier than you thought. So, you can do that. You can separate cars by side-drafting them.”

ARE YOU MORE IN CONTROL OF YOUR OWN FATE HERE? “Yes, because you aren’t stuck in the middle. We are still talking about the same stuff we talked about seven weeks ago, nothing has changed. It is exactly the same as it was there. We aren’t in the middle of a 33-car pack where you are stuck in the middle and can’t go anywhere. Nothing has changed guys. It’s the same thing this week.”

DO YOU THINK THE ANXIETY HERE AT TALLADEGA WILL BE A LITTLE BIT LESS BECAUSE OF THE FACT YOU ARE NOT IN A BIG PACK? “It’s not any different. We’re literally doing exactly the same things we did at Daytona. There is nothing different because it is Talladega versus Daytona. The only difference is, it’s not the biggest race of the year. That is really the only thing that is any different.”

IS THERE ANYTHING YOU COULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY THOSE LAST TWO LAPS AT DAYTONA? “Yes, we don’t know how we didn’t get together, just like we said the week after, we just couldn’t get together. We never got the bumpers locked up and by the time we did get going, so many of the cars had gotten by us, we weren’t a factor anymore in a two lap shoot-out like that.”

DO YOU ALREADY KNOW WHERE YOU NEED TO BE TO MAKE THE MOVE OUT THERE? “Just get me to that point and I’ll figure it out when I get there. I don’t know yet though. You honestly don’t know because there is still the variable of what cars are around you and what are they doing. That is going to play a big factor in it.”

WITH YOUR STRETCH THIS SEASON OF SO MANY OPPORTUNITIES TO WIN, IN YOUR CAREER, HAVE YOU HAD A STRETCH LIKE THIS. “I’ve been doing this for 31 years, I didn’t always have good luck.”

WHEN YOU WIN A RACE, WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE? IS YOUR ADRENALINE PUMPING? IS YOUR HEART RACING? “Your adrenaline is pumping the whole race. That’s why guys an hour after the race is done are just tired; you are over it for the day. Especially at a place like this where you don’t know on the last lap that you’ve got it won until you get there. So, that anticipation is building and building and the reason it is so suspenseful is because you don’t know until you get to the line whether you’ve got it or don’t have it. There’s times when you win races and you’ve had a comfortable lead the last 30 laps and your heart rate is down because you aren’t being pressured. Here you don’t have that luxury. You are pressured all the way to the line and you don’t know until you get there whether you’ve got it. You know how far you are away from it, so, you know the anticipation keeps building. You remember (every detail) of the finish. You don’t remember anything about the early part of the race, you remember the end that got you there; that won you the race. It may only be a 100 foot section, but you remember all 100 feet of what it was in that move that got you to the line.”

Those who intentionally live off another’s labor will always want more free stuff!